“Our work suggests that this spinach-like, nanoparticle
juice can help doctors get a better look at what’s happening
inside the stomach, intestines and other areas of the GI
tract,” says Jonathan Lovell, PhD, assistant professor in the
Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program between
UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the
Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, and the
study’s corresponding author.

To examine the gastrointestinal tract, doctors typically use
X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasounds, but these
techniques are limited with respect to safety, accessibility and
lack of adequate contrast, respectively.

Doctors also perform endoscopies, in which a tiny camera
attached to a thin tube is inserted into the patient’s body.
While effective, this procedure is challenging to perform in the
small intestine, and it can cause infections, tears and pose other
risks.

The new study, which builds upon Lovell’s previous medical
imaging research, is a collaboration between researchers at UB
and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It focuses on Chlorophyll
a, a pigment found in spinach and other green vegetables
that is essential to photosynthesis.

In the laboratory, researchers removed magnesium from
Chlorophyll a, a process which alters the pigment’s
chemical structure to form another edible compound called
pheophytin. Pheophytin plays an important role in photosynthesis,
acting as a gatekeeper that allows electrons from sunlight to enter
plants.

Next, they dissolved pheophytin in a solution of soapy
substances known as surfactants. The researchers were then able to
remove nearly all of the surfactants, leaving nearly pure
pheophytin nanoparticles.

The drink, when tested in mice, provided imaging of the gut in
three modes: photoacoustic imaging, fluorescence imaging and
positron emission tomography (PET). (For PET, the researchers added
to the drink Copper-64, an isotope of the metal that, in small
amounts, is harmless to the human body.)

Additional studies are needed, but the drink has commercial
potential because it:

· Works
in different imaging techniques.

· Moves
stably through the gut.

· And is
naturally consumed in the human diet already.

In lab tests, mice excreted 100 percent of the drink in
photoacoustic and fluorescence imaging, and nearly 93 percent after
the PET test.

“The veggie juice allows for techniques that are not
commonly used today by doctors for imaging the gut like
photoacoustic, PET, and fluorescence,” Lovell says.
“And part of the appeal is the safety of the
juice.”